Well, they want you to stop using the address. They have to say something to discourage you. But they would give it back…
I caution you with this stance.
Obviously everyone is free to use the solutions that make the most sense for their circumstances, but crypto to gift cards is not bs.
In many countries crypto can be used to buy gift cards for restaurants, grocery stores, mobile phone service, airbnb, hotels, air travel, ride share transportation and many other life necessities. You can literally purchase the life necessities of food, clothing and shelter with these gift cards in many countries.
Thinking of future readers of the Forum, I encourage everyone to keep in mind the wide variety of circumstances that lead people to use crypto and not discourage others from exploring options that might suit their needs or needs of people they care for in banking challenged communities.
As we all know, regional rules change quickly and custodial services are not without risk.
Mt. Gox, FTX, Blockfi, Celsius, Voyager, Silvergate Bank, Bittrex and the uncertainties of Binance US.
It’s not just the exchanges themselves but their banking partners.
The crypto landscape changes quickly, often without warnings.
Not your keys not your coins is as true today as when Satoshi mined the genesis block.
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100% agree, but the same logic applies to gift cards.
Ok, then please explain me how I can follow the NKNC principal with gift cards? Will they send me a gift card that I can verify to work in my supermarket before or after they received my coins?
That again is exactly the reason why I say, repeating the phrase “not your keys not your coins” is not helping the average user. It is a fine principle, an ideology, an idea.
It is like me saying “every social media platform should be fediverse”. Sure I am right in theory and in a perfect world that would be the case. It is just not how the real world works.
Anyway I wanted to make a comparison of how many a average node operator could get.
Let’s assume for simplicity, that for the last year you got 20$ every month.
With my extremly risky exchange monthly payout approach you would get 12 * 20 minus 12$ fee = 228$
With the approach NCNK yearly payout you would have got
Jun 0.61 = 32.8
Jul 0.64 = 31.25
Aug 0.58 = 34.5
Sept 0.44 = 45.5
Okt 0.4 = 50
Nov 0.34 = 58.8
Dez 0.26 = 76.9
Jan 0.35 = 57.1
Feb 0.45 = 44.45
Mar 0.37 = 54.1
Apr 0.36 = 55.55
May 0.29 = 69
All in all that is 610 Tokens. With 10% payout bonus that is 732 tokens or currently 188$ without any transactions fees.
So yeah, you can decide between
- the totally risky FIAT way and get 228$
- or you could take the totally not risky way of self hosting a wallet and not loosing your keys, send that money to some totally trustworthy company that has no chance of going bankrupt like bitrefill and conveniently use that gift card in your supermarket, with the warmth feeling of staying true to your NKNC principals.
The choice is yours 
PS: the payout difference is so big, even if my Exchange would have gone belly up in the meantime or they changed my wallet address twice during one year and I would have lost two monthly payouts completely, the total payout would be exactly the same 
PPS: Of course this is just a retrospective, I am sure the price will go superstonk in the future.
1 ) what ?
2 ) idk why you are on a crusade against gift cards but you are entitled to your opinion. The solutions work for people globally every day. Please read the ToS from the gift card companies to better understand their processes.
3 ) NKNC applies the same as cash purchases in this situation. You must obviously voluntarily relinquish custody of your coins used to purchase a gift card the same as you must relinquish custody of the cash you use to make in person purchases. Not sure what is so unusual about this.
4 ) your solutions include a lot of money lost to exchanges scenarios followed by saying that’s within your risk tolerances. Ok, do what is comfortable for you. But there is no need to discourage others from using gift cards purchased with crypto held in self custody wallets.
5 ) Due to my affiliations with the Storj company, I can not comment nor speculate on token prices.
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What?
I have nothing against gift cards. I just think self custody costs to much and is riskier. I only compare gift cards to FIAT withdrawn because that is the cheapest way according to the NKNC maximalists.
No thanks, but please answer my previous question. Will they send me a gift card that I can verify to work in my supermarket before or after they received my coins? No? Ok, than there is a also a risk involved in that.
Nothing.
100% agree. Jesus Christ, that is my whole point! Is this a language barrier or something? If yes, I am sorry, English is not my native language. That is my whole damn point. My argument is that
1: The risk is not higher
2: The returns are way higher
You guys keep repeating: “Yeah but that is NKNC, so that is very risky”. YES IT IS! I am not denying that! I repeat, I am NOT denying that! I just think that your approach has a similar if not higher risk factor AND a lower total payout.
I is also a completely different topic that we already discussed in another thread 
Nobody can look into the future. I wrote down what has happened the past year based on hard facts and real data. Do with that information whatever you want. Because just like you, I think that everybody here is entitled to his/her own opinion. I wanna offer a different perspective. And if we look back at the past year @Gasp0de could have saved at least 40$. Maybe he listened to much to the NKNC crowd here in the forum?
Because remember, this thread is not about me or you, this thread is about @Gasp0de crypto fees are insanely high.
That’s bitcoin. Ethereum has rewritten history since the DAO “hack”
So you are only 99.9999% correct
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After, same process as when you buy a gift card with cash. You must pay first before they activate the card and give it to you. This is a normal flow of retail. What is the question with this step?
I’m happy to discuss these things with you provided you are not rude. If you are rude to me, we are done here. Consider this your warning.
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Lol fair enough.
Won’t even mention all the other chain rollbacks and fork battles
So, to sumarise the options, after you receive your storj payment, you can:
1.Hodl for a brighter future.
2.Exchange it to FIAT/gift card.
3.Exchange it to other Crypto.
Choosing 1, the best way is to “mine” and hodl in your wallet, not on an exchange. That’s pretty obvious. This is the risckyest move from what I can tell. All pointers say storj has no reason to go up, but who can tell the future?
Choosing 2, maybe the best way is to use an exchange wallet; it involves less hassle, you don’t have to wait for hours for transfers between addresses, and you can receive pretty much what your dashboard says in $. This is the lowest risk option, the rewards are predictible.
Choosing 3, depending on what crypto are you aiming for, and what fees are involved, the own wallet or an exchange wallet could be the solution. With the new crypto received, you can trade it in week trying to get 5-10% more FIAT out of your payment, or hodl. This appears less risckyer than the first option, and could be very rewarding after 1-3 years. But again, nobody can see the future.
My personal strategy? I do both 1 and 3. I hodl some Storj, hoping we will se again some nice exchange rates, and I exchange the rest to BTC or some major crypto, that I believe it will bring me much more than the present payout.
What you do with your tokens is your choice. We don’t recommend using anything but a wallet you own the keys to. Otherwise, if SNO’s used an exchange that we recommended and that exchange went belly up, the SNO’s would say we need to refund them for recommending the exchange. As we have pointed out, it is also a risk.
We do understand the logic that by sending tokens directly to an exchange you avoid having to pay the fees involved in moving the tokens from your wallet to the exchange. However, we always want to point you to the most secure option. There may be a guy named Dave who you can send your tokens to and he might give you more than an exchange. We wouldn’t recommend Dave either.
So, it is good policy to always recommend the most secure option. What you do from there is a choice you have to make. That’s all.
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20 characters
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Agree 100%!
But if the only offramp to FIAT were Dave, I don’t have a choice. Sooner or later, I have to trust/risk Dave. If I have to trust/risk Dave anyway, I can select him as my wallet to beginn with and save on transaction fees, without a higher risk.
You still do. You have a choice not to go through fiat in the first place.
But in reality, more than one Dave always exists, exchanges come and go, and only your wallet you have password from is an invariant. Trying to save few bucks does not justify extra headache tracking what’s going on with exchanges, keeping addresses updated, or thinking about this every month in the first place. The more I think about it the more I stand by the “not your wallet - not your money” mantra. Conventional banks are audited and regulated. Crypto is still Wild West. When you store stuff in your wallet — you trust math. When you store stuff at exchange you have to trust some random dudes. I don’t trust random dudes, and don’t want to think about them monthly.
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What does my landlord, my electricity provider and my local supermarket all have in common? They all don’t accept STORJ tokens 
Sure, but that missed the point of @Knowledge and my analogy.
Agree, and they are mostly criminals. But even criminals can operate for years before they go down.
A few bucks? 188$ instead of 228$ is over 20% bonus and not just a few bucks to me.
Psssttt… Not only are conventional banks better audited and regulated, they are even cheaper for international wire transfers…
You trust math, and that the STORJ token will not loose value, and that you don’t loose your keys.
I don’t trust them (criminals) either. But even if they fool you once a year, you are probably still better off. Some exchanges will send you an email when a new payout arrives. That could act as a reminder.
But yes, I agree with all your points. I have to trust Dave. You have to trust that a token (with the economic model STORJ has, and the intrinsic value (there isn’t a monthly TB per token guaranteed value)) will not loose value.
That is fine, and we can have different opinions on these matters.
I just take issue with the “there is no risk or trust involved if you do it the X way”
This is not different in either of cases. Storj token value does not depend on where you deposit it. So, you have to trust Dave, annd keep track of the deposit anddress and I don’t. That’s the only difference. Storj token fluctuations affect both equally, asymptotically transaction costs at zero.
You are paying too much for conversion, but still, the ratio will go down over time. Transaction costs are fixed, payouts increase, so this is irrelevant.
This is irrelevant. You can continue laying them with cash. But if there is one service that you use which does accept cryptocurrency — you can pay them with converted tokens, and send cash to your lairs. Or are you earning with storj enough to cover rent, power, and food monthly? Then transaction fees converting to cash are small fraction of the cost and are irrelevant.
This is too late. Your tokens were just deposited to defunct address because exchange changed it and you had better things to do than read emails from them. See my point?
This is one of those cases when one approach is objectively better than the other, and if you have different opinion you end up taking up uncompensated risk.
It is different. If I pay 4$ instead of 1$ per transaction, I am forced to hodl 4 times as long (for the same transaction fees). So no, that is not the same.
Agreed. One service that I pay more than my STORJ income is. Unfortunately there is none.
Sure, I even agree.
I agree, my approach is objectively better. Self custody is too big of an uncompensated risk for most users
Let’s elaborate here. What is the risk precisely? Losing a passphrase? I’m pretty sure most users have by now grasped the concept of password managers. I feel like risk of losing passwords is the very least thing most users need to wory about.
With third party exchanges you still need to have access to your account there. Still need a password, and recovery process. With your own wallet it’s the same. You have a passcode and a recovery process for your password manager. (Usually a printed master password on a piece of paper). Except with your wallet your risks stop here, and with exchanges - just start.
The primary risk, at least for me, is the complexity of the tooling. With the good old bitcoin I know I can just have the original standalone client working on its own blockchain copy and such. With the new fancy toys I have to install some weird browser extensions? WTF?
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No :). I don’t have any extensions installed. The keys are added to a DApp wallet app on my phone, and when I want to connect to an exchange I scan the QR code and authorize/sign the transaction in the wallet. The passphrase never leaves my phone. No extensions needed.
But yes, there are wallets implement as browser extensions, why not, some people prefer that.
If anything — the tooling seems to “just work”, in contrast to having the whole copy of thechain and some weird client sheninigans 
That’s actually how I lost my passphrase once. Lastpass had a bug that made it lose additional fields stored with username and password info. I never was able to recover it. (It only had about $30 of value on it at the time, so not the biggest deal, but still.)
Anyway, lesson learned. Never rely on a single way to recover your pass phrase.
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